Analyst Michael Pachter tweets about yesterday's NPD figures, revealing sales of Max Payne 3 are less than half of those of L.A. Noire for the same period: "Without divulging too much NPD goodness, I can tell you that Max Payne 3 sales were less than 50% of L.A. Noire's. 8 years in development!" Thanks Strategy Informer.

I don't think MP3's apparent failure has anything to do with the quality of the game or the franchise itself. I think it has more to do with people getting tired of completely linear and scripted shooters. There's been a trend over the past few years of such games not meeting sales expectations. Alan Wake, Darkness 2, Space Marine, Syndicate, Metro 2033 and FEAR 3 comes to mind. Unless a game has a strong multiplayer focus (like CoD, BF, Halo and GoW), having a completely scripted and linear single-player component isn't enough these days. Hell, when even the next CoD is adding branching stories and moral choices, you know that times are changing.

People can claim that this game still has the "noir" in it, but then let me argue that it wasn't just the "noir" that made Max Payne Max Payne.

Not a single moment in MP3 did I feel like I was playing the same protagonist I was in the first 2 games. EXCEPT during those few flashbacks where Max was back New Jersey. Why they chose Sao Paulo for MP3 is still very.. very much beyond me. They could've called this game "They Stole My Kidney" instead.

Let the sales be the proof that not even Roclstar can take a franchise and rape it beyond recognition. Like I said before, a Southpark episode should be made of this. But then, we already have one of those about indiana Jones...

not surprised, I only discovered it was out because of the jokes around diablo 3's launch... wasnt too interested in it even though I was a huge fan in 1 and 2. Different company, hugely different look and feel in the trailers that seem to lack what we actually enjoyed about max... and the movie didnt help it.

Max Payne 2 was a commercial failure, the franchise is not popular enough to be a revenue top dog, unlike Hitman or Tomb Raider. Rockstar should be glad if MP3 makes enough money to cover development and marketing costs.

"Max Payne" would be a perfect example for a Kickstarter campaign. A low profile, dirty, gritty, not mass compatible re-imagination of the first game. A small team, low dev costs and a dedicated fan niche. This would be successful. Making a blown out AAA monster for a franchise which was nearly forgotten by the majority of customers? Stupid idea.

Verno wrote on Jun 15, 2012, 15:51:One thing I found really frustrating is that they didn't seem to know how to challenge the player so they just put you in a lot of unfair situations. I remember a cutscene where they made me sit motionless outside of cover while enemies spread out around me then had the nerve to swap me to a pistol instead of the massive assault rifle I had going into it. Just dumb shit like that makes you wonder where these gameplay decisions come from, I almost can't believe anyone played it and said "this is great!".

I agree with Flatline, when its good the game is fun but too often its interrupted by a staggering amount of largely unskippable cutscenes and the poorly balanced scenarios they drop you into. It feels more like they were going for Die Hard The Game here instead of Max Payne but maybe that's just because its a different dev.

Anyways, got it on sale so no regrets and it's certainly not a bad game but damn, I can't believe some of the obvious problems they let through.

Oh dude yeah... The pistol swapping thing was infuriating. I re-mapped the thumb button on my mouse to "equip 2-handed weapon" simply because I was sick of having to scroll for it after EVERY goddamn cutscene.

Or how about you see a golden gun bit off in the distance, or painkillers, and you wait to finish the gunfight before you go run out into the open to pick up sh*t. You kill the last dude and it dumps you straight into a cutscene, so you can't even pick up any ammo! I was dumped into some fights with like 12 bullets left because they cut-scene'd me without a chance to pick up some ammo.

Or how about you go pick up an assault rifle, hit a cut scene, and Max like sets it down and walks away... No dumb shit... I want you to carry the fucking thing. That's why I picked it up!!!!

Plus, there was one instance where the bad guys fanned out and started shooting, and between the end of the cut scene and when I actually gained control of Max, I was shot dead. I rage-quit the game at that point for several days.

Agree with pretty much everything you said. One moment I felt annoyed, the next blown away. Odd gaming experience.

The flashback sequences, especially the graveyard, were excellent and felt right for a Max Payne game. It sucked finishing them and then going back to the Vin Diesel version of Max Payne trying to steal a bank vault from out of police station in Brazil..

I didn't mind Payne's pained language, people had the same complaints with the originals. The difference was the original titles had some tongue in cheek bad guys for Max to play off of and the gothic nior feel of the originals fit Payne. In MP3 he's the same Max but he's surrounded by character's that are all playing it straight and the setting is typical "realistic" (bland) Jerry Bruckheimer Rockstar. Sometimes it was actually amusing having Max complain about them but by the end it did get tiresome.

One thing I found really frustrating is that they didn't seem to know how to challenge the player so they just put you in a lot of unfair situations. I remember a cutscene where they made me sit motionless outside of cover while enemies spread out around me then had the nerve to swap me to a pistol instead of the massive assault rifle I had going into it. Just dumb shit like that makes you wonder where these gameplay decisions come from, I almost can't believe anyone played it and said "this is great!".

I agree with Flatline, when its good the game is fun but too often its interrupted by a staggering amount of largely unskippable cutscenes and the poorly balanced scenarios they drop you into. It feels more like they were going for Die Hard The Game here instead of Max Payne but maybe that's just because its a different dev.

Anyways, got it on sale so no regrets and it's certainly not a bad game but damn, I can't believe some of the obvious problems they let through.

Creston wrote on Jun 15, 2012, 13:07:I need to try Arcade mode, see if that lets you play without the CONSTANT interruptions.

Cutscenes are all still present in the arcade mode. I was also hoping they were removed

....... FUCK.

Creston

Considering that the cut scenes are actually curtains to hide the constant loading due to the consolization (Levels literally are one or two firefight rooms per "level", the rest is cutscenes), I'm not surprised that you can't skip them in Arcade.

MP3 left me... conflicted. When it was good it was effing awesome. Otherwise, it was kind of bland and watery. Gameplay wise I found the Favella and the jungle/river/boat dock missions to be shit. Enemy closets, boats full of badguys spawning behind you with no way to know you're being shot at without going into last man standing mode after getting gunned down, bad guys spawning beyond the game's draw distance and of course having perfect accuracy at you, they all pissed me off. The Airport especially had that issue of bad guys spawning beyond the draw limit, or worse yet, terrain that could stop bullets not being drawn and I'd shoot bad guys and nothing would happen because I couldn't see the pillar they were standing behind.

In fact, the entire airport level just kind of pissed me off. The last fight more or less blew.

The flashbacks were actually fun. I enjoyed those pretty much without reservation.

The writing... yeeeech... Okay I'm fine with schlocky writing. But Max... was totally unlikable. Even after he decides to sober up he's still too f*cking emo. His jokes fall flat and it's like Rockstar didn't *want* us to root for the dude.

I retract my "Man on Fire" comparison... that would have actually been kind of a kickass storyline compared to this weird, stupid organ bootlegging thing that is only tangentially related to the original events that set everything off.

That being said, I wasn't thrilled with catching on geometry, and snapping out of bullet time because my lunge was too close to the geometry of the level blew, so I relied *way* too much on cover and bullet time for fine aiming. I still say MP games have been about movement, not about taking cover. And bullet time was funky how it allocated/was used up.

But man, when it worked... it was worth it. The levels where you had office complexes and lots of diving, workable cover, the game opened up and became a blast to play. I had a half a dozen moments where I literally thought "there's no way I should have lived through that!" which was partially why I was so pissed at the narrative. I just got done gun ballet shoot/dodging my way through 15 SWAT team officers at point blank range and came through without a scratch, and in the subsequent cut scene Max is like "Who was I kidding... two dyslexic cripples with a set of brass knuckles between them could take this fat, drunk, washed up american slob out" and I'm like "dude... have you *seen* the fucking wake of carnage and destruction you've left behind you?"

He feels in over his head with gang bangers, when he previously had taken down an army of privately trained mercenaries involved in an Illuminati-like conspiracy. It was a total disconnect, like they couldn't reference what had actually happened in previous games. There is, literally, one sentence about Mona, a toss away where he's like "yeah, she got what was coming to her and that sucked, but I don't care". WTF Mona was the chick who was supposed to "get to" Max after he burned out. That was the point.

I dunno I'm rambling. Technically, aside from the console limitations of tiny tiny levels, it was a good game, plauged by boring levels and cheap "gotcha" moments. But when it worked, it was good stuff.

No Steam, no Impulse, no D2D/GameFly, no XBLA or PSN, or any digital at all. They're absolutely worthless as a gaming data provider. And just as a reminder to everyone, NPD doesn't even include all retail sales; they were making a big deal a couple months ago because they FINALLY made a deal to get information from Wal-Mart, the biggest goddamn retail chain in the world...